Finding farmer-warrior blood

Finding farmer-warrior blood

Lads and lasses: Now there's a surefire way to prove your Scottishness. The Pictish identity initiative can run a DNA test to see just how Scot you really are

RANDY BOSWELL, CanWest News Service

Published: Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Four million Canadians who claim Scottish ancestry now have a surefire way to prove their forebears came from the land of bagpipes and haggis: a DNA test for ancient Pictish parentage.

The earliest known inhabitants of present-day Scotland were tribes of short, fierce farmer-warriors who forced the Romans to build stone barriers, including Hadrian's Wall, to keep them out of conquered southern Britain.

The dreaded Picts - smeared with blue dye and covered in tattoos, according to legend - were eventually overrun and blended with other ethnic groups in medieval Scotland.

Now, a University of Edinburgh researcher has developed what's being called the ultimate litmus test for Scottishness. For about $280, clients can send a swab of saliva to a lab run by population geneticist Jim Wilson to find out whether Pictish blood is running through their veins.

"If they have the Pictish type that we've discovered, that would definitely be able to prove that they have deep Scottish ancestry," Wilson told CanWest News Service yesterday.

"A lot of people from Canada, the U.S. and Australia believe they have Scottish ancestry, but can only trace the family tree so far. Taking a DNA test goes way back beyond paper."

Canada has been a key destination for Scottish immigrants for centuries. Nova Scotia - "New Scotland" - and numerous other regions became a haven for Scots-born settlers after the forced displacement of thousands during the Highland Clearances.

Scottish-Canadian fur traders helped explore and populate much of the West. And Glasgow native Sir John A. Macdonald, the principal architect of Confederation, is among the many prominent Scots-Canadians who helped shape this country's history.

Ties run so deep, the Scottish government recently identified Canada as the prime target in an economic development strategy to reverse the Scottish diaspora and convince thousands of young Canadians with Highland roots to move back to their ancestral homeland.

Wilson - whose pioneering DNA tests for Norse ancestry inspired a special BBC genealogy project called Blood of the Vikings - is also president and chief scientist of Ethnoancestry, an Edinburgh-based genetic-analysis service.

To test for a "Pictish signature" in a client's DNA, the company creates a genetic profile from the submitted spit sample and checks it against 27 genetic markers that Wilson and other researchers have traced to the Picts.

The test, which traces traits on the Y chromosome, can only determine ancestry through a client's male lineage.

"If you have a Scottish mother and a Chinese father, this would not be the test for you," Wilson said.

Scottish tourism officials and family history enthusiasts are applauding the Pictish identity initiative.

About 20 per cent of all requests for genealogical information at public record offices in Scotland come from Canada and the U.S.

Ewan Colville, international marketing manager of VisitScotland, told the London Sunday Times newspaper: "This test gives a new perspective to genealogy. Picts are the original people of Scotland and this would take the traditional search to its ultimate conclusion. It provides a novel way of tracing your genetic makeup to the indigenous people of Scotland."

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=f274236c-7c20-453a-a670-343f8d181de0